What ideas did I have about this modality/issue/resource prior to experiencing it?
My first impression of the TED concept as a whole was strictly related to the TED Talk platform and viewed it as a way to expose myself to topics I had never really considered before, and truthfully to kill time when I’m commuting to work.
As the MALAT course progressed, I was interested in learning more about what TEDEd was as the term started to pop up in some dialogue and literature throughout various courses. I realized that it was a completely different entity and served more of an educational purpose than some of the TED Talk storytelling delivery methods. When I first started exploring the modality, some of my first impressions were that the content categories and topics were all over the map, you could learn about anything from “How Squids outsmart their predators” to “How to analyze the human brain” and if you really wanted to, you could purchase an “Oh Beehive!” t-shirt from the sites gift shop. The site is far more dynamic than I was expecting and truly supports a collaborative learning environment for people to work together and create content. It is evident that it’s a destination for curious people who take an active role in expanding their knowledge and wanting to connect with other like-minded learners.
What impact might this modality/issue/resource have on learning/learners? teaching/teachers? organizations? society?
As it stands, TEDEd is completely non-profit, with funding generating from Patrons who can opt for $2, $3, $4 and upwards per month. This makes it easy for people of varying financial situations to actively support an educational platform. TEDEd also creates opportunities for teachers and educators to collaborate with members of the TedEd team and animators to create compelling content to share their knowledge. I wonder how many teachers are incorporating these segments or taking advantage of the resources this site has to offer within their own classrooms?
Like many video curated libraries, TEDEd continues to add to the abundance of knowledge being shared on the internet. However, unlike other user-generated content sites like Youtube, there is a sense of validity through a vetting process and requirement for certain credentials. For this reason, I believe the impact on learning as a whole will be positively impacted by this effort. By having all of the easy, visually appealing, and quickly digestible video clips for learners to interact with at their fingertips, it gives learners a destination they can trust.
What other examples would be worth investigating? Are there others? What might be missing?
My experience so far has been that of exploration with a narrowing focus on design methodology related to video-based learning for the sake of the critical inquiry. This has kept me focused on learning theories and design attributes that impact learning and is evident within the TEDEd process. However, there are other aspects worth investigating like regulation, licensing, incorporating TEDEd into a curriculum and many other topics. I will continue to explore concerns and opportunities in my upcoming posts.
Hi Katie, it’s great that you addressed the legitimacy question of video curated libraries as anyone who makes a video can profess to being an ‘expert’. I wonder what TEDEd does with their vetting, especially being a non-profit if they have the resources to do more than just a Google search. With the Lynda.com model (for profit), I would imagine they can attract more qualified teachers to their platform. I do get that the target audience and company direction may be a little different so I might be comparing apples and oranges here…
The incorporation of videos and microlearning is something my organization is looking at as well. Teachers are always looking for more resources to go at things at a different angle hoping it helps students learn with more options. I look forward to seeing any examples you might find of TEDEd being merged into a curriculum.
Hi George,
It sounds like our interests within our chosen modalities are quite similar. I have yet to explore Lynda.com but the concept is quite interesting to me as our parent company has recently partnered with them and their courses are directly embedded into our corporate LMS. You would hope that their educators and content creators are experts and that there is a strong vetting process in place as I’m sure companies are counting on them being a reliable source. Through my experience with TEDEd, there is a strong mission to support teachers specifically and create an opportunity for them to collaborate with animators chosen by TEDEd to build lessons for students around the world. TEDEd often refers to their contributors and advisors as experts and have short bios on some of the individuals who oversee the platform. It would appear that they all have varying credentials from doctorates to elementary school teachers. When looking at the nomination process, it looks like it’s done based on the honour system with questions about experience, but no way to prove it. However, I did not complete the process so there is a good chance it potentially gets deeper into credentials as you get through the preliminary steps. Either way, by the looks of the board of advisors there are definitely individuals who would determine the relevance and quality of content before posting, this at least creates a middleman before simply adding to content to the internet for the sake of it.
It looks like some teachers have incorporated content into their daily teaching routine, although not part of their curriculum per say, they are using it to enhance the learning as opposed to replace the current system. I believe you are a teacher in K-12, if so, do you see yourself leveraging this type of tool in the classroom? What types of courses do you think would be most beneficial to be delivered in this format?
While I work with teachers regularly, my role is in research at my local school board. Because of this, sometimes I feel I’m a bit on the outside as I’m not a subject matter or pedagogical expert. I believe core fundamentals such as Math and English need a standardized curriculum, but more specialized courses maybe in History or Geography can benefit from the varied experiences and knowledge that TEDEd can bring into the classroom. We are trying to create ‘global citizens’ in our students and I think this is a good way to expand our students’ horizons in an inexpensive way.
Katie, your blog post on TED-Ed is perplexing for me. Knowing what I know about you, and your heavy focus on corporate, adult learners, I’m surprised you spoke so much about teachers, students, classrooms, etc. Do you see any relevance of TED-Ed to corporate training? Looking at TED-Ed from a corporate learning perspective myself, I have to admit I was less enamoured by TED-Ed than I had anticipated. I love TED Talks and was thrilled to attend a live TEDx when we were at RRU in residence, so I was predisposed to like TED-ED. Unfortunately, I felt the experience fell far short of my expectations. While it might be great for teachers and students, and there might be the occasional gem I could use, for the most part, I am not the target audience, and neither are the learners I design courses for. How do my thoughts compare to yours? I also found your comment about the validity of TED-Ed videos puzzling. Specifically, that videos produced by experts were perhaps more credible than user-generated content. I know your organization was looking into opportunities for employees to create user-generated content – did that fall by the wayside because of their partnership with Lynda.com?
Hi Amber,
After exploring TEDEd further as I got deeper in my critical analysis, I really started to understand the set up of TEDEd and what it was meant for, which is definitely targeted towards teaching, classrooms, and students. I think I would have chosen a different modality in hindsight as you’re right, I am more interested in the corporate learning environment. I don’t feel like TEDEd would add as much value in its current state for my corporate environment in comparison to something like Lynda.com which has proven to be successful in engagement during the first month of its corporate launch in our office. In terms of my topic relating to the instructional design process, I did find it valuable to dig deeper in the video-based learning design approaches through TEDEd and other curated video libraries even if their target audiences weren’t the same as what I’m used to. I found the connection to learning theories to be beneficial in both education and corporate learning (this far in my research).
In terms of validity, we did attempt to test a user-generated content strategy last fall and had mixed reviews. What we learned out of that was that we did require a lengthy review process as a fair amount of content coming from our store-level teams was in fact misinformation and not a proper use of the training platform we had intended. We ended up reverting back to industry experts to create product-specific content as it helped us ensure that the content was accurate and useful for training purposes which is what led to my comment about perhaps having experts vetted through TEDEd might add credibility to the content (and save time). Lynda.com is strictly used in our corporate office, the training my team (with the support of industry experts) produces is for our field (store level) teams.
With your experience in private sector, do your clients require industry experts to create training content or are you as the instructional designer required to source it yourself? Do you ever feel like you’re in a position where you have to rely on external training libraries or platforms to pull knowledge from? For myself, when I reflect, it’s crazy to admit that I think I’m Youtube at least once a day looking for quick solutions 😐
Great discussion, everyone. I too am amazed at how often I just put my question into Google, and discussion boards or YouTube videos show up with solutions from users. Recent examples include finding out how to replace a piece of vinyl siding on my house that I accidentally melted with my gas barbecue, to figuring out the best way to remove wood stain from my deck. As discussed elsewhere in the course, there is abundant content all around us, and at least part of the job in managing workplace learning is figuring out how to find, curate, contextualize and present it to learners. This is a relatively new skillset, as compared with developing everything from scratch.